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“I do not understand the purpose of Tatooine rules.”
Cassian chokes on his drink, and that makes Melshi laugh so hard revnog shoots out of his nose. Cassian recovers first, while Melshi continues to cough and splutter from the nog burning his sinuses.
“Who told you about Tatooine rules?”
“I have been researching the many variations of Rianza in order to collect more data for our games,” Kay replies, seemingly unphased by their reactions, “ you said I needed more experience to prevent myself from losing so frequently, Cassian.”
Uh oh. Cassian and his big mouth again, forgetting that Kaytoo was liable to take whatever he said all too literally. Making all of this very much his own fault.
“Many of the variants typically make up for lack of game pieces, betting multipliers or the introduction of card elements, all of which change the probabilities by which one might decide to place their bet. However, Tatooine rules make no changes to the standard base game or its probability applications, and the file I read insisted that it could be added on top of any other existing rules,” his head tilts to one side, and Cassian still doesn’t know where he picked up that particular gesture, “I do not see the merit of playing this way, surely it is redundant?”
Melshi, now fully recovered and cup refilled, grins at Cassian conspiratorially. Cassian glares back. Don’t encourage him.
“Well…” Melshi lets the word drag, reordering his dwindling pile of betting chips, “what do you know about Tatooine?”
“Tatooine is a desert climate biome, therefore I note the benefit to organics removing layers of clothing in order to remain cool. An inefficient system might I add,” Kay remains, as always, unimpressed by the messy requirements of metabolic processes. “However, such removal of items is described as a forfeit, which does not correlate as expected with my climate predictions. Through my research, I have concluded that for some beings, such an action might be considered humiliating. Though I do not understand why its incorporation into a game of Rianza should fundamentally change the play parameters.”
Cassian is only just able to follow the spew of jargon, which probably has something to do with the fact he is considerably tipsy right now. It’s definitely why, when he opens his mouth to reply, absolutely nothing comes out. And it’s to be blamed on the amount of drink consumed – and no other reason – why his mouth remains open, agape, when Melshi says,
“Perhaps you require a practical demonstration?”
Kay takes a moment to consider the offer, while Cassian’s brain catches up and remembers to clamp his mouth shut again.
“Affirmative, a practical demonstration would be very instructive,” Kay pauses, his optics switching between the two of them, “though my input into the play may render any results ineffective, since I do not have clothes to remove.”
There’s a loud slap of skin on skin as Melshi smacks his hand to his forehead, “Of course!” and stands up so quickly he lists dangerously to one side, and Cassian is sure he’s about to end up on the floor.
By some miracle, Melshi rights himself, pushing back from the table, and staggers into one of yurts side alcoves. After a few moments, wherein there are a significant number of rummaging and crashing sounds, Melshi reappears, bundles of fabric in either hand, and a fresh grin splitting his face.
The things in his hands, as it turns out, are a ragged scarf, which he wraps around Kays neck, a hat, that perches precariously on top of his head, barely held in place by the ear covers, and the largest pair of gloves that they own, which very much do not fit on Kay’s overlong and jointed fingers.
The sight of him, and watching as Melshi struggles with the second glove while the hat slips from Kay’s head and the attached pair of goggles smack him in the face, makes Cassian laugh so hard his stomach hurts.
Melshi steps back to survey his work, while Cassian wipes tears from the corner of his eyes.
“Looking great Kay,” Cassian wheezes as Kay waves his gloved hands in front of his eyes, testing his dexterity.
Seemingly satisfied that he is still able to pick up tiles and betting chips, Kay turns to look at Melshi, hat threatening to fall off his head again, and asks, “Is this an adequate number of items for Tatooine rules?”
Melshi hums in thought, giving Kay an intense once over. “Somethings missing,” he says seriously, then shrugs out of his jacket and drapes it over Kay’s broad frame “that's better.”
Cassian is vaguely aware that he should be laughing again, at the ridiculous sight of a seven-foot tall KX droid looking more like a very elaborate coat hanger, accessories and all, currently sat across the table from him. Aware, vaguely, that his face suddenly feels very hot. That breathing normally has become a conscious effort.
It’s been two months since the bottom dropped out of his world. Two months since Kay and Melshi came crashing into it (or back into it in Melshi’s case). Two months since Melshi had dragged him into a bone crushing hug in the middle of the droid maintenance workshop. Caught up on the last three years over one too many drinks far into the early hours of the morning.
Two months since Melshi had passed out in the hammock and then just never left. Of course Cassian hadn’t minded in the slightest, having company in this space made things easier to bear than being alone. Somehow, it was easier to sleep with Melshi’s soft snoring mixed in with the sounds of the jungle at night.
Yet somehow, despite all that, and quite without explanation, Cassian is unable to recall a single point in the last two months that he’s seen Melshi without a jacket on.
It’s not as though they haven’t seen one another clad in far less, though under significantly more fraught circumstances. In any case, what had been glanced in peripherals was fleeting. Keeping your gaze straight ahead was the one small privacy that they could all afford one another in that place.
There hadn’t been time, after, to let eyes roam and linger as they had crammed themselves into one of the public changing lockers and stripped and redressed. Cassian would’ve haggled over the price of Melshi’s shirt if he had felt less frantic, but that had been entirely forgotten as he’d watched him smooth down the creases of the fabric over his chest. Eyes closed in concentration, breathing deeply as fingertips brushed over the texture of the thread count. Lips twitching up, at something so far removed from the stiff, thin, cloth of their prison uniforms.
They’d walked along the promenade toward the call booths, soft fabrics shifting over their bodies in the ocean breeze. For the first time in all he had known him, Melshi’s shoulders were relaxed, softening the slope of his neck, arms clasped loosely behind his back.
In his memory, though hazy with grief and fear, Melshi was lean. Slight. Muscles coarse from an unknown amount of time spent working day after day and never stopping. There had been force behind that handshake, a pull that had brought Cassian to rest close, the sides of their heads pressed together.
So that had been his lasting impression of a man he had never expected to see again. Tall and sinewy and burning with hatred for the Empire.
He really should’ve noticed before now, and it's a testament to just how badly his perception had fallen off in that whirlwind week where everything about his life had felt turned inside-out and upside down. Should have registered the strong arms across his back and the stretch to make his own hands meet between broad shoulders and put two and two together.
There’s nothing lean or slight about Melshi’s build now. His biceps strain against the crop of the short sleeved shirt as he crosses his arms over his chest, muscles flexing and flesh giving under the press of his fingers into the crook of his elbow. Shadows cleave deeply between the muscles in the lowlight, and the softness around the edges that must have something to do with the revnog buzz.
Melshi laughs at something, chest rising and falling, making the sleeves dig and press into his arms more tightly with the movement.
Cassian tears his eyes back onto Kay as he begins talking, clenching his jaw shut as the realisation hits that his mouth is hanging open once again. Luckily neither of them seem to have noticed Cassian’s momentary lapse in concentration.
“Does this not put you at a disadvantage?” Kay is asking, adjusting the lay of the jacket across his back.
“Only if I lose,” Melshi chuckles, sinking back into his seat, discreetly sending a wink in Cassian’s direction.
Oh, Cassian is so fucked.
He is spared the first round, due only to the fact that he currently has the most betting chips to lose, and overbids more than Melshi can match, with more luck than anything that his two tens and three twos are worth more than Kay’s full house.
Melshi reaches over and unceremoniously knocks the hat off of Kay’s head, given it had barely stayed on with every swivel of his neck. Cassian stares at the long line of his arm, the sharp point of his elbow, the casual flick of his wrist. Barely notices the casual arc of the hat as it falls and knocks one of the empty bottles off the table, until the sound of it clattering to the floor jerks him back to his senses.
It’s all downhill from there.
In quick succession Kay loses the gloves and the jacket, Melshi his boots and vest, and Cassian is so distracted by the way the fabric pulls across his chest that he misreads the numbers on his tiles and loses spectacularly on a bluff hand that he had been sure contained at least two pairs.
Jacket, shirt, boots, socks and belt soon follow and suddenly Cassian is wearing nothing but his trousers and a deep flush that is definitely from the revnog .
He buries his face in his hands as Kay collects the bet chips for his winning hand, Cassian left with a significantly smaller pile of chips than when they started.
“All right Kay, who yer picking?” Melshi probes, refilling both of their cups.
“You appear to be entirely too pleased by the prospect Sergeant,” Kay’s optics flicker rapidly, the way he does when calculating, “I happen to know that this morning, Cassian was in too much of a rush to put on any underclothes.”
A fact that Cassian is all too aware of. He drops his head to the table to hide the grimace on his face and mumbles, “Have mercy on me Kay.”
Kay sighs, “I must note that choosing you would be the most optimal course of action, if these ‘Tatooine rules’ are as I have analysed.” Cassian groans and prepares to lose the remainder of his dignity.
To his deep relief, Kay instead requests that Melshi take the forfeit and remove his shirt.
Which might just be the opposite of merciful.
Melshi pulls the shirt off over his head, and dumps it on the growing pile of (mostly) Cassian’s clothes. He’s just as flushed from the revnog as Cassian is, colour blooming across his collar and the curves of his shoulders.
Cassian pulls a fresh hand of tiles and desperately tries to focus on the numbers present, but can’t seem to stop his eyes from flicking up to take in the broad expanse of Melshi’s chest, the defined curve of his pectorals, the deep pale scar that cleaves between the two.
He breathes hard, dragging his eyes back to his hand. This is ridiculous. He really can’t afford to lose another hand as Kay had so unhelpfully pointed out. The numbers swim and Cassian blinks hard to bring them into focus, and is pleased to find himself holding a small straight, a decent hand. It’s the best chance he’s had at winning in several rounds.
Kay bids low which is not unusual, always choosing an optimal, but predictable strategy. Melshi’s next, spending several moments deliberating, carefully tapping the backs of his tiles with long fingers, connected to thick wrists, defined forearms, flexing biceps, curved broad shoulders sloping downward, chest rising and falling calmly. The soft crease of his stomach as he leans forward to place his bet. The dark patch of hair below his navel, trailing downwards towards…
“Cassian?”
Cassian wrenches his gaze back up. His ears are ringing. Melshi is giving him a strange look. He taps Cassian’s pitiful pile of chips with a suggestively curved finger. “It’s your bid.”
Fuck.
He’s entirely lost track of what tiles are in play, or what the current bid multiplier is. He glares at the back of his tiles, desperately trying to recall what was on them. It doesn’t matter. Folding would be tantamount to forfeit.
After scrambling to do the additions in his head, he matches the current bet on the table (which amounts to almost all of his remaining chips). Kay matches, and Melshi calls the round, knocking his knuckles to the table.
Cassian turns over his tiles with a sigh of relief.
“Small straight.”
Melshi groans and flips over a full house, which means that Cassian’s hand has beaten his, and his dignity is safe for another round.
“Large straight,” Kay announces, tiles aligned with perfect kerning.
“What? No!” Cassian leans over the table to inspect the tiles which are in fact a large straight. Which means he’s lost. Again.
He gapes at Kay in dismay. “Don’t do it,” he pleads.
“I do not think you are in any position to make such a request, Cassian,” Kay huffs with annoyance, collecting his winnings, “perhaps it is you that requires more experience, since you keep losing so frequently.” Kay considers him, optics flickering. “Though I expect this game would end rather abruptly, were I to choose you.” His head turns on its axis with deliberation, “Melshi, you must forfeit your socks.”
Cassian’s stomach drops the same moment that Melshi’s expression slides flat. He fiddles with his tiles, throat bobbing around a nervous swallow.
“New house rule!” Cassian blurts, far louder than necessary, “If you don’t want to remove an item of clothing, you have to take a shot of Tonc’s rotgut.” There’s a barely touched bottle of the stuff sitting on the shelf. Tonc’s unsanctioned still out the back of the Pathfinders barracks produces spirit that tastes like jetfuel runoff and is strong enough that more than a shot might make you go blind.
“You are just making that suggestion because you’ll be the first to lose all of your clothes,” Kay protests, “and introducing a new rule that does not apply to all player’s equally will impact my analysis.”
“My house, my rules,” Cassian insists, because he’s far too drunk to have that barefoot conversation right now.
Melshi clears his throat, “Agreed, you’re outvoted two to one, Kay,” and sends Cassian a look halfway between grateful and relieved.
“This would fundamentally alter the parameters of the experiment, and I already have plenty of data where your inebriation is concerned,” Kay’s voice grates as he removes the scarf off of his neck with careful deliberation, “in any case, I believe I have enough data to make an assessment.”
“Oh?”
Kay rises slowly from the table, and says, “Tatooine rules make Cassian an incompetent player,” deeply unimpressed. He towers over the two of them as Melshi stifles a laugh behind his hand. “I shall leave you to your rotgut and bid you goodnight. I have further playstyles to analyse,” and with that, Kay stomps heavily into the side alcove where his charging port is.
The room feels suddenly very quiet, with just the two of them alone, and leaving Cassian with no excuse for elsewhere to look. His hands itch to reach and grab his clothes from the floor. Yet he is certain that urgency would give up far more. As much as his bare flushed skin might be from the drink, would it not be far more evident as something else should he be in such a rush to re-cover himself.
Instead Cassian clears his throat as starts to organise his mess of tiles, eyes firmly fixed upon the tabletop.
“Thanks,” Melshi says after a few quiet moments.
“For what?” Cassian asks, daring to raise his gaze only to be met with Melshi’s all too honest expression.
“That was a good house rule,” he half smiles, though his eyes drop sheepishly to where he’s pushing around his own tiles. “I should probably tell him.”
Cassian wonders if it’s ever been something that Melshi has explained before. How many places need that kind of soles-bared intimacy that would require such an explanation? What circumstances would require such a raw truth to be shared?
He frowns at the stack of chips in his hand. Cassian might be the only person to need no explanation. To simply know .
“You don’t have to.”
“I know,” Melshi shrugs, the rise and fall of the curve of his shoulders catching Cassian’s attention, “just thought it might make things easier, if he knows too.”
“You know he’ll add that to his ‘assessments’,” Cassian says seriously, but Melshi just laughs at the turn of phrase.
“Speaking of assessments,” He’s watching Cassian very intensely. Cassian’s mouth feels dry. “Kay was right. You played like shit.”
His face is burning again. Holding his gaze feels like an impossibility. Like Melshi can dissect every thought through the window of his pupils. Cassian swallows.
“I drank a lot,” his voice comes out strangely rough, like he hasn’t used it in days.
“You were playing just fine before,” Melshi parries.
He had been playing perfectly fine before. Perfectly fine before Melshi took off his jacket and provided such an ample distraction. How could he possibly be expected to concentrate on the damn game when he was too busy trying to imprint those brawny arms into his retinas? Or pay attention to bets and bids while he was cataloging the freckles and sunspots across Melshi’s shoulders?
Or care a whit about winning when Melshi laughed, and his abdomen flexed and tensed and that trail of hair bobbed enticingly, disappearing below the waistband of his trousers where Cassian’s eyes couldn’t follow?
“Would you like to hear my assessment?”
Cassian wrenches his gaze back up to Melshi’s face at the same moment something warm and solid runs up the side of his calf.
He isn’t breathing. His voice won’t work. His mouth is hanging open again. When did that happen? Melshi’s toes press into the dip behind his knee and Cassian can’t suppress the way his body shivers at the touch. His heart is racing by the time he remembers to nod.
“That I probably don’t need ‘Tatooine rules’ to get your trousers off,” Melshi says quietly, almost breathless, leaning into Cassian’s space. The deep flush across Melshi’s chest and neck matches his own, as the only words his brain can provide are an approximation of the kind of reply he might expect from Kay, though with entirely more wobble to his voice.
“On the basis of the evidence, I would concede that as an accurate conclu-“ Melshi shuts him up with his mouth on Cassian’s, hungry and demanding and eager. Slips his tongue in when Cassian moans, reeling from the intensity. Hands roving across flesh, giving over completely to temptation, hot and pliant beneath his fingertips.
Melshi’s hand brushes over his nape, fingers curling in Cassian’s hair, tipping back his head and nipping at his bottom lip. Gasping, Cassian grips him by the arms and pulls them both to their feet.
They stagger, Cassian lightheaded with vertigo, righted as Melshi’s free arm grasps around his waist and presses their bodies close. Melshi’s chest heaves against his, breathing hard between open mouthed kisses and Cassian's body aches with desire.
It doesn’t register how far they’ve moved – Cassian too focused on getting lips and teeth and tongue over Melshi’s pulse – until the backs of his knees hit the mattress. He wobbles off balance, planting his feet and pushing back on Melshi’s chest. His heart is pounding. He’s dizzy. There isn’t enough air in his lungs.
Melshi takes a half step back instantly, hands hovering at the side of Cassian’s neck and waist as he searches his expression.
“Are you good?” he’s breathless but serious, lips red and kiss-swollen.
Time slows, hazy, with a trembling nervous energy as he takes a stomach deep breath and reality comes crashing into sharp focus. He’s halfway between desire and desperation, straddling lust and devotion. He’s halfway to panic, at the bone deep fear of being left behind again.
But he knows that Melshi’s lips on his feels guiltless, and the heat of his body against his makes his blood sing. Good? It’s hardly an adequate descriptor for how it feels when Melshi’s hardness is straining against his own. Maybe the only thing Cassian is sure of, is that he doesn’t want to waste anymore time.
“Yeah,” Cassian breathes, and unbuckles the belt of Melshi’s trousers.
Everything moves embarrassingly fast after that, when Melshi’s hand is around both of them and they move in tandem, breaths synchronising. Embarrassingly fast, or would be if Melshi hadn’t fallen over the edge right after him with a bitten off grunt against the shell of Cassian’s ear.
He collapses on the bed next to him, breath hot and shuddering across his shoulder. Cassian basks in post-climactic bliss as Melshi curls around his arm, the two of them lain bare, spare the socks still on his feet.
Cassian turns his head to the side, brushing their noses together. A satisfied smile eases onto Melshi’s lips, and he reaches up to cup Cassian’s face, thumb brushing across his cheekbone.
Cassian drops his lips to the corner of his mouth and mumbles, “I don’t remember this part of Tatooine rules,” and feels Melshi laugh against him.
“Well then, you’ve definitely been playing them wrong.”